(09-05-2017, 06:20 AM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One of the earliest thoughts I've had about the herbal illustrations in the Voynich MS, or perhaps rather a question was:
"could the drawings be the result of someone painting herbs on the basis of a non-illustrated herbal text?".
This idea has, in a way, stood the test of time, in the sense that this is still a possible explanation for many of the features.
Some elements very strongly suggests that they have been drawn from nature or from a live example of a herb. They are 'better', or more realistic than in most contemporary herbals.
This includes the flowers of the viola / daisy (f9v), the root of the supposed water-lily (f2v) and the entire drawing on f21r, which looks more like a modern photo of knotgrass than any of the many old herbal illustrations of poligonum ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ).
Hello Rene, the idea that the illustrations in the VMS might derive from a herbal text with no illustrations didn't occur to me until I read Darren Worley mention that possibility. I guess he had the idea independently from you. Finding out that the Trinity College ms provides such detailed descriptions of the aspect of the plants, coupled with such unusual images, has made that hypothesis even more interesting to me.
InYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I discussed some details of plants in the last section of the herbal (the one with Common-Greek-Hebrew plant names). Differently from the VMS, many illustrations in this section use artificial, geometric shapes. I think this is due to the fact that the text uses abstract descriptions, such as “round” or “squared” leaves. Occasionally, some parallels with other plants are used, such as the flower in the central plant of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which is said to have “the shape of a lily”.
Indeed, one can think that something similar happens in the text of Voynich f2v.
The previous section of the herbal (which typically has recognizable plant names with unusual illustrations) in most cases uses parallels with other plants. For instance, honeysuckle (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) is described as “having a shape similar to bindweed or ivy which coils around trees …. Its flower is purple and similar to lily, having the same smell as lily”. In this case, it seems clear that the illustration is not dependent on the text, but is derived from actual knowledge of honeysuckle.
On the other hand, one could speculate that the oak and ivy Voynich illustration You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. derives from a textual description similar to that in Trinity 75r: a plant “similar to ivy which coils around trees” and having clusters of black berries (with no description of the leaves).
In general, the fact that the second section of the Cambridge ms mostly uses botanical similes, while the last (Common-Greek-Hebrew) section uses more abstract descriptions, seems to me to make the second section a better parallel for the Voynich herbal.
In both sections, when the text uses a non-botanical simile to describe parts of the plant, bizarre elements appear in the illustration. E.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. describes the plant has having “flowers similar to ducks”. In this manuscript, the frequent introduction of zoomorphic / anthropomorphic elements seems to be largely independent from plant names and strictly dependent on the textual descriptions. Again, one cannot exclude that something similar happens in the VMS.
I agree that Voynich You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is particularly intriguing when compared with the illustrations in the Cambridge ms. If the plant was meant to represent water-lily, the root and leaf are too good to be derived from a textual description: they were clearly originally drawn by someone who knew the plant very well. Could it be something else than waterlily, described as having roots and leaves similar to Nymphaea and a flower similar to waterlily? Was it derived from a good but flowerless illustration of waterlily and the illustrator decided to add a lily-like flower?